I need some help with Civ5

[Lightingbird]

So I'm new to this game, this being my first time playing civilization and I love it. My game has max graphics set on my laptop and its just a huge amount of fun.

The problem I am having is that I keep on losing!

I am playing Civ5 and domination. If I'm lucky, I can make it to the industrial age. Usually, I get conquered before then. Usually around the medieval age or so. For example, I played today at work and France invaded me. At the time, I had 3 cities, about 450 gold, making 20 a year/turn, two archer divisions, and two swordsmen.

So they invaded and I allowed them enter my nation and I solely stuck to defense for my bonuses. During the course of this war, I must have killed five or six of their units by maneuvering my men for set attacks on exact divisions and with the cities attacking. Then right as I thought it was over, I clicked end turn. Then, six more units marched in. I flipped out in anger ha. So they killed my units off and just took my cities.

So, here is where I can use help.

I was having a problem getting gold before but I think I have figured that out now. How on earth can I build a standing military that I can afford? Is there a rule I should keep? Say 3 units per city or something? It was almost like France was using some sort of cheat for endless gold or units. They had so many and I only have four total. Not to mention, they were only making 10 gold a turn!

Any help or tactics please? I have played 8 times on prince now and not won yet ha. I keep getting ran over by the super armies.

 

[njd.aitken]

Don't start on Prince? Or have you played other difficulties with success already?

 

[Lightingbird]

Don't start on Prince? Or have you played other difficulties with success already?

Logically, starting on a easier level will not help me. It will just make the game AI slower and make less beneficial decisions and produce a less effective army. Changing the difficulty level down will only increase my chance to win but when I come back to Prince, it will be the same thing.

I don't know how to make an effective and growing military.

So I'd like to learn of any tactics or advice so I can take this game on. On another forum, when I was having problems with gold someone told me that. Now I figured that out with some help, so I'm sure someone can help me with some military tactics.

 

[wcbarney]

... If I'm lucky, I can make it to the industrial age. Usually, I get conquered before then. Usually around the medieval age or so. For example, I played today at work and France invaded me. At the time, I had 3 cities, about 450 gold, making 20 a year/turn, two archer divisions, and two swordsmen.
... How on earth can I build a standing military that I can afford? Is there a rule I should keep? Say 3 units per city or something? ...

Two archers and two swords just don't make a big enough army to hold off a determined attacker -- they might have held out way back in the Classical Era, but have no chance in the Industrial. Archers & swords seem terribly obsolete if you're in Industrial; you should already have at least crossbows & longswords, and hopefully cannons & rifles.

If you have 450g & 20gpy then you can afford to build about five more units -- hopefully a cannon or two + other ranged units. In my experience (LOTS at the Emperor level) the AI usually concentrates on attacking one city at a time. Have one of your siege units inside the city being attacked, and use it to pick off their ranged units first, followed by bombarding these ranged units with your city. Rely on all your ranged units first & foremost; if you use melee units they will likely be killed between turns (except horses/knights which can retreat out of range & heal). You should build walls & castles ASAP in the border cities likely to be attacked. Also, you should start early & build up XP by killing barbs, etc., so that you can generate a General to add his two cents worth of defensive & offensive bonuses.

 

[torfish]

Agreed, learning to play civ 5 on prince is difficult and will probably frustrate you. Espeically if you are trying to win by domination. Highly recommend starting on a lower level. A very important factor is selecting a civilization that meets your play style and matches the type of victory you are going for.

In my opinion, domination is the hardest victory type to win. Possibly try a culture or science victory. Win a couple games on a lower level and you should be set to move up on the difficulty scale.

 

[manu-fan]

Logically, starting on a easier level will not help me. It will just make the game AI slower and make less beneficial decisions and produce a less effective army. Changing the difficulty level down will only increase my chance to win but when I come back to Prince, it will be the same thing.

I don't know how to make an effective and growing military.

So I'd like to learn of any tactics or advice so I can take this game on. On another forum, when I was having problems with gold someone told me that. Now I figured that out with some help, so I'm sure someone can help me with some military tactics.

No seriously. Don't play on Prince. Just drop down one level and beat that a few times before coming back to Prince. Money is difficult to manage on Prince, and slightly easier on Warlord.

If you want some tips on money - more cities - settle by rivers when possible - connect your cities with roads - build markets.

On Military, there's an old addage that is very true in Civ 5 also - the best defense is a good offense. If you're gearing up for war against your neighbor, you'll be able to withstand any attacks also.

Good luck.

Cheers.

 

[njd.aitken]

Logically, starting on a easier level will not help me. It will just make the game AI slower and make less beneficial decisions and produce a less effective army. Changing the difficulty level down will only increase my chance to win but when I come back to Prince, it will be the same thing.

You are having trouble with relatively simple game mechanics, so, logically, an easier difficulty setting will allow you to learn the mechanics without the frustration of losing.

Also a hint for future posts: Don't attack those who only want to help you. Peace.

 

[majorkong]

Here's my suggestion. Start a game on a Standard Pangaea as Rome.

Found your city. Build a scout and two warriors while you tech to Writing. Take the Liberty branch and get the free settler. Buy a worker with your first 310 gold.

Then do the following in possibly varying order:

1. Build 3 more warriors.
2. Get techs to improve all your luxuries and then sell all the luxes to the AI. Don't go below 0 happy (not a hard rule... going below 0 happy for a really important burst of cash is ok).
3. Tech to Philosophy and build library->National College
4. Beeline to Iron Working and plunk a settler down on the nearest iron resource (pref. 6 iron, but you take what you can get).
5. Upgrade as many warriors as you can to legions. Ideally you want 6 legions. You can ally a CS or buy trade a lux for iron if necessary.

Feel free to buy stuff with cash as it becomes available, making sure you save enough to upgrade at least a few warriors to legion as soon as you get your iron online.

With your 6 legions, go find the nearest civ and puppet their cities. At this time, your opponent's city combat ratings should be in the 12-17 range, and legions should take them easily. Lay down trading posts on all your puppets.

When you can, add 4 seige units to your 6 legions. This is basically all the army you will need for the entire game, though you will naturally acquire more units eventually. Beeline Steel, then Rifling, then Dynamite. If you have money problems, lay down more trading posts, tech Currency/Banking/Economics, and keep conquering. Get the +happy policies from Honor and the +happy policy from Piety. Your puppets will build walls and monuments that will help with your happy problems.

Archers are not necessary. You don't even have to research the tech until after you have legions beating down. I often never build a single archer, and I win basically 100% on Immortal.

You don't have to be Rome. But for your first shot, might as well be a civ with a swordsman UU.

 

[muk14]

best way to learn is to play multi player. When u see wut ppl do with wut they got

 

[Tabarnak]

best way to learn is to play multi player. When u see wut ppl do with wut they got

It's 2 different worlds/games. You can't learn in mp and come back against the immortal AI and think you can win easily.

 

[Lightingbird]

No seriously. Don't play on Prince. Just drop down one level and beat that a few times before coming back to Prince. Money is difficult to manage on Prince, and slightly easier on Warlord.

If you want some tips on money - more cities - settle by rivers when possible - connect your cities with roads - build markets.

On Military, there's an old addage that is very true in Civ 5 also - the best defense is a good offense. If you're gearing up for war against your neighbor, you'll be able to withstand any attacks also.

Good luck.

Cheers.

OK OK...

I'll try it. Good quick tips on money too. My thinking is just that if I go to a easier game, doing the same thing I'm doing now, but the game is easier and lets me get away with it. Then I'll just end up back in the same situation when I get back to prince.

Here's my suggestion. Start a game on a Standard Pangaea as Rome.

Found your city. Build a scout and two warriors while you tech to Writing. Take the Liberty branch and get the free settler. Buy a worker with your first 310 gold.

Then do the following in possibly varying order:

1. Build 3 more warriors.
2. Get techs to improve all your luxuries and then sell all the luxes to the AI. Don't go below 0 happy (not a hard rule... going below 0 happy for a really important burst of cash is ok).
3. Tech to Philosophy and build library->National College
4. Beeline to Iron Working and plunk a settler down on the nearest iron resource (pref. 6 iron, but you take what you can get).
5. Upgrade as many warriors as you can to legions. Ideally you want 6 legions. You can ally a CS or buy trade a lux for iron if necessary.

Feel free to buy stuff with cash as it becomes available, making sure you save enough to upgrade at least a few warriors to legion as soon as you get your iron online.

With your 6 legions, go find the nearest civ and puppet their cities. At this time, your opponent's city combat ratings should be in the 12-17 range, and legions should take them easily. Lay down trading posts on all your puppets.

When you can, add 4 seige units to your 6 legions. This is basically all the army you will need for the entire game, though you will naturally acquire more units eventually. Beeline Steel, then Rifling, then Dynamite. If you have money problems, lay down more trading posts, tech Currency/Banking/Economics, and keep conquering. Get the +happy policies from Honor and the +happy policy from Piety. Your puppets will build walls and monuments that will help with your happy problems.

Archers are not necessary. You don't even have to research the tech until after you have legions beating down. I often never build a single archer, and I win basically 100% on Immortal.

You don't have to be Rome. But for your first shot, might as well be a civ with a swordsman UU.

This is what I was mainly looking for regarding military management. Thanks. Now I have another question, should I limit myself to a few cities or go nuts?

 

[majorkong]

This is what I was mainly looking for regarding military management. Thanks. Now I have another question, should I limit myself to a few cities or go nuts?

There's no need to settle tons of cities. Honestly, two will often do just fine. Your capital, and your iron city. Sometimes you'll see another juicy city spot with lots of luxes and/or iron, and you'll want to settle that also. Two/three cities plus all the puppets you can handle will do just fine.

P.S. This is not even close to the only way to win this game. But I find it's a repeatable strategy that wins consistently up to Immortal.

 

[joncnunn]

Cash management:

Sell useless stuff to the AIs such as open boarders to AIs NOT on your landmass & strategic resources your not using in the next 30 turns; especially coal & oil when first discovered [and there's nothing to use them on yet]

 

[Nightshades]

-Learn correct tile improvement
-Learn a few "openers" (meaning: build orders at the start of the game)
-Learn where to place cities and how to prio resources
-Play on something lower than Prince
-Use trades and diplomacy as much as possible. You gain a lot by having the other civs fight wars against each other instead of you
-Micromanage what tiles each city should work
-Learn the happiness/unhappiness mechanic
-Play standard size/standard pace maps to begin with. You learn faster and better by playing more games than long games. I did the mistake of playing too many marathon games early on.

Openers for example is discussed a lot, and you can learn good city placement by studying the GOTM -threads.
The general rule on happiness is that having 0 or lower is bad - but managable in wartime. Having -10 is VERY bad because it makes your units fight worse. Surplus happiness should be "traded away" for gold. And you should try and not expand and conquer faster than you can manage. Like... settling a new city when you have 2 happiness and 3 cities growing is a bad idea unless you can get your hands on new luxaries or build "happiness" buildings.

You can learn all by just reading here on the forums. I've learned a lot in just I dunno... 2-3 weeks?
Currently playing on King and moving up to my first Emperor game tomorrow.
Take one step at a time.

 

[Dean.]

-Learn correct tile improvement
-Learn a few "openers" (meaning: build orders at the start of the game)
-Learn where to place cities and how to prio resources
-Play on something lower than Prince
-Use trades and diplomacy as much as possible. You gain a lot by having the other civs fight wars against each other instead of you
-Micromanage what tiles each city should work
-Learn the happiness/unhappiness mechanic
-Play standard size/standard pace maps to begin with. You learn faster and better by playing more games than long games. I did the mistake of playing too many marathon games early on.

I learned all or nearly all of this from trial and error.


OP:
One note about openers: tech is always important. There isn't a victory I can think of that doesn't rely on, or significantly benefit from technology. Beeline to Writing -> build the great library. The free tech is very valuable, and this early advantage will scale in importance as the game goes on.

Don't train a settler until you've established at least 2 or 3 population in your city. I usually wait for the free liberty settler.

Don't be afraid to restart games if you screw up. For this reason, playing on standard speed can be helpful, but I prefer to do marathon all of the time. It allows me to move around and tweak my economics more frequently. But for low-level learning games, there's nothing wrong with standard or fast pace games.

 

[Snuffleupagus]

Great tips above, but I'll add a simple one:

tactically it is often better to have your units fortified than it is to attack. This was counter-intuitive for me. When you're not trying to take a city, let the AI's units come to you and hit them with your ranged from behind fortified units.

The AI has a numerical advantage in units. Even if you can kill one of their units be attackign with your swords, you are probably putting your unit in a bad position where it will be killed. The one for one trade is a net loss for you against the comp.

 

[Kbo]

I can see where you're coming from by not wanting to start below prince. Those levels IMO are mainly for learning what each building does and how units move, very quick learning curve, I haven't touched them myself either.

My advice for you would be to work on essentially what Nightshades has posted, with a couple differences. For myself, everytime I would move up in a difficulty setting I'd focus mainly on staying alive, not victory conditions or whatnot, just being able to play through the entire game and hold my own. This means upgrading units and getting your Civ specific units and buildings out asap, and utilizing your civs ability (or abilities in cases like the US) as much as possible.

Next game, try starting out by getting mining, and make a decision whether you need archers right away (basically if you have a very close neighbor that loves to war, Alex/Genghis/Caesar/Hiawatha are all known for it) or if you can go to writing for libraries. Settle a city or two near resources that'll provide happiness, one of them production, the other for gold. Build up a force of atleast 5-6 archers and keep yourself well defended...and see what happens then

 

[blightmoon]

I believe for someone aiming for domination, your play style has too little units, which I think is the result of a lack of focus on military endeavors. Maybe you researched Theology and built Temples when you could have researched and Metal Casting and built Workshops. The game seems balanced enough so that you can't win by trying to get everything.

In general, in the early phases of the game, 3 warriors or 2 archers is good. As has been said, there are build orders that are superior than most so it helps to study those.

I play Emperor Epic and my idea of playing domination victory is setting up that "timing attack" with your UU. A lot of familiarity with a particular civ helps. By that I mean making economic, SP, and tech choices that revolve around making a strong push with your UUs as soon as the tech needed to unlock the UU comes, balancing the power of the push with the timing (as early as possible).

That is made up of 3 to 4 phases. Setup is where you build up the pt and the pt. Build up is where you start making your big army and stack up for the sudden upgrade to the UU as soon as the tech unlocks. The big push starts upon unlocking the UU where you attack as fierce as you can while still making all the units that you can for reinforcements and hopefully, you end the game with this. Sometimes, you don't end the game with the push and you have to transition out of going to war and stabilize happiness, economy or science. The end result should be that you are in position to take the game or at least in much better position in case the difficulty level is Immortal or Diety.

Other things that come in between the things discussed are secondary and are used only to help with the primary concerns. This usually means not getting a lot of wonders.

 

[Brichals]

-Learn correct tile improvement
-Learn a few "openers" (meaning: build orders at the start of the game)
-Learn where to place cities and how to prio resources
-Play on something lower than Prince
-Use trades and diplomacy as much as possible. You gain a lot by having the other civs fight wars against each other instead of you
-Micromanage what tiles each city should work
-Learn the happiness/unhappiness mechanic
-Play standard size/standard pace maps to begin with. You learn faster and better by playing more games than long games. I did the mistake of playing too many marathon games early on.

This is spot on. A lot of things, so maybe really a couple of games or openings on warlord to see how things work out will be better. You don't need to if you don't want and you can learn by reading here but why not just experiment with a few things.

You can do a legion rush to learn warfare mechanics but if you do that every game you will probably end up in the Civ5 rants thread because it's boring and probably a cheap tactic below higher levels.

 

[Roxlimn]

Off the cuff, I would broadly say that you will want at least an army of 6 units in general if the AI you're up against is of any reasonable strength on Prince, and at tech-parity in terms of units. If you're planning to attack or have many cities, I would bump that up to 8, 10, or even 12 or more for monster armies in big Civs.

Know your tech, the units, and the promotions. Archers become much less powerful during the medieval era - you will want to upgrade them to Crossbowmen soon, and look to upgrading Swordsmen to Longswordsmen for serious wars.

Force your enemy to situate themselves in terrain that is favorable to you. Fortify Drill units on Hills and Forest, funnel the enemy through Open Terrain and pick them off with multiply promoted Accuracy Archers or Crossbowmen. You may want one or two highly promoted Shock troops for direct melee engagement with enemy units in Open Terrain.